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Jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis, educator and father of four noted musicians, died in New Orleans after contracting coronavirus, his son said. He was 85.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell called the musician an icon in announcing his death. The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music confirmed his death to NBC News affiliate WDSU.

The musician had the disease caused by the virus, COVID-19, and pneumonia, one of his sons told the Associated Press.

Ellis Marsalis was an icon — and words aren’t sufficient to describe the art, the joy & the wonder he showed the world. May we wrap his family in our love & our gratitude, & may we honor his memory by coming together in spirit— even as the outbreak keeps us apart, for a time. pic.twitter.com/evIBCJk7Z3

Wynton has won nine Grammy Awards. Branford led the Tonight Show Band on the NBC show when Jay Leno hosted. He also toured with Sting.

Ellis Marsalis was a pianist and educator who performed on television in Los Angeles weekly after serving in the Marine Corps in the 1950s. He returned to New Orleans to spread the gospel of jazz at the Southern Repertory Theater, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and a local venue, Snug Harbor.

The community became known as Musicians' Village and, in 2011, it was added what would become its centerpiece, the nonprofit, 17,000-square-foot Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, which includes performance space, recording facilities, a listening library and classrooms.

"Sometimes, as a gentleman once said, violence is very often the midwife of change," Marsalis told NBC News as planning and construction on the village began.

"Katrina was very violent because what you are seeing now are things that some of us talked about for years in a kind of abstract manner — a place where musicians could hang out, if you will, where musicians can go and learn," he said.